The cleaning of oil spills and other foreign material on the surface of water has become of major concern. More and more the necessity of quickly and effectively cleaning such oil and other foreign material is being recognized. As a result of this recognition, many different, individual techniques have been developed for cleaning the surface of the water of this unwanted foreign material. (Hereinafter, the term oil spills will refer generally to viscous floating material on the surface of the water, be it oil or other viscous material, it being intended that this term oil spills be broadly encompassing of any non-missable floating liquid or liquid-like material on the surface of a body of water).
The many different techniques which have been evolved include the vacuuming of the surface of the water, utilizing means to soak up the oil off the surface of the water and then removing the soaked oil from the soaking device, utilizing chemicals to aid in the conditioning of the spilled oil, as well as many other devices and techniques.
While all of these different techniques have found application in certain instances, and work effectively in certain limited situations, nevertheless these systems all have suffered from many serious limitations or drawbacks. Principal among these limitations has been that the various techniques and systems have had very limited ranges of operability both as to the type of oil which can be picked up and the condition of the spill such as the presence of solid floating objects, and/or the meteorological and hydrographical conditions under which they can operate and also the size of the job which they can continuously work on. Thus, while each of the previous systems has proven somewhat successful in various phases or areas of operations, there has been no system or technique devised which is operable on a broad scale of different types of spills under widely different meterological and hydrographical conditions and continuously operable over extensive periods of time to complete the operation on major spills.